New Website and a new resource

1 Mar 2012

I have transferred to a new hosting provider and made a few upgrades to the website. The most significant of which is the new DFIR directory. I got the idea for this after my post on free non-forensic tools for forensics. That post just kept getting hits. At the time I wrote it I had a quick look around for different sites listing forensic tools, there are a few out there but none seemed complete. For about five minutes I contemplated writing a list myself however the effort required in building and maintaining such a list is enormous and I don't really have the time to do it. So being the kind of person that looks for the long term solution I thought why not try a crowd sourced option. This was attractive for a couple of reasons, firstly it would give those people who provide tools, blogs and other resources somewhere to promote them. Secondly most lists are just that flat lists, they are hard to search and each entry can only be listed under one category (which is normally the platform it runs on or the cost, not particularly useful when you are looking for a tool to interpret data from a web browser for example) so my list had to be searchable and able to classify the tools by what they could do. Finally I wanted to allow people to review the tools and provide feedback.

So after a little bit of work I have created the DFIR Directory. At the moment it has ten categories, most with five or so sub categories. Any entry can be listed under one to five categories. In order to add an entry you must create an account, one you add an entry you will own it and only yourself and administrators will be able to change it. If you are the creator of a tool, or blog and would like ownership of the entry please email me (meetups_at_writeblocked.org) with your username and the reason why you should have ownership of the entry.

So after a few weekends of work the framework is in place, now the directory just needs to be filled. I will be doing that as time permits, but really it is not going to work unless everyone gets involved. So why not create an account and add your favourite tool and blog? It will only take you a few minutes and you will be helping the entire community.

I should also mention that I had an interview with HTCIA the other day, it is posted here: http://htcia.wordpress.com/2012/02/09/dfironline-defragmenting-the-digital-forensics-community-with-htcia-member-mike-wilkinson/. I live in hope that the HTCIA will one day open it's membership to everyone, it would help to break down that fragmentation.